During the second 911 call, which took place after the shooting, Lorincz sounds as if she is crying, her voice barely audible. She said someone tried breaking down her door and that she fired at the door. The jury, which deliberated about two and half hours, later asked another question about damage to the door to Lorincz’s home.
‘She has no duty to retreat’
In his closing argument, prosecutor Rich Buxman told jurors Lorincz admitted pulling the trigger and killing Owens.
“It wasn’t an accidental situation. It wasn’t a situation where she slipped and the gun accidentally went off and shot the door and struck Ms. Owens,” Buxman said. “That’s not what we have here. She intentionally fired it. There’s no doubt that the defendant intentionally committed an act, which caused the death of Ajike Owens.”
Buxman said Lorincz acted with “utter disregard for the life of others.”
“She pointed a loaded firearm towards a door, towards a person that she knew was there in the opposite side of the door and intentionally pulled the trigger. That shows a reckless disregard for human life,” he told jurors.
In her closing argument, Sizemore told jurors the case is one of perception.
“The constitution of our country embodies the right to be able to defend ourselves,” said Sizemore, whose remarks followed the prosecution’s closing argument. “The law demands that we assess the reasonableness of that perception, not from the comfort of a courtroom, but we have to take ourselves back to the perspective of the moment itself.”
Under Florida law, Sizemore said, citizens have the right to defend themselves in the face of imminent danger. “She has no duty to retreat, and she can stand her ground when she is in her dwelling if she is faced with imminent danger,” she said of Lorincz.
Sizemore described Lorincz as an older woman with medical issues who lived alone in a troubled neighborhood when one night she was “startled by a barrage of screaming, profanities and banging on her door.”
“In that circumstance, it’s what Susan Lorincz reasonably believed was necessary to prevent – that’s a very important word, prevent. The law does not say that you have to wait to get punched or attacked before you can do something. You can use deadly force to prevent someone from coming into your home and hurting you or attacking you,” Sizemore said.
